"Bibbity-bop-seeeex" / "Squiddly o-day"

To start the day off, Laura and Matt Bradley were late to class. *wink*... Just kidding. Laura is going out with Kyle Schafer currently. That makes me smile inside. They're both perfect for eachother, basically.

MOVING ON.... HEY! I got rid of that fucking ball in my left hand and it felt amazing! I felt as if a giant boulder had been taken off of my shoulders and thrown into the air along with my juggling ball. It was truly freeing.

Repetitive Actions Breed Success

- Thanks Lank.

Lank talked about a book called "Zen In the Art of Archery:"

So many books have been written about the meditation side of Zen and the everyday, chop wood/carry water side of Zen. But few books have approached Zen the way that most Japanese actually do--through ritualized arts of discipline and beauty--and perhaps that is why Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery is still popular so long after it first publication in 1953. Herrigel, a philosophy professor, spent six years studying archery and flower-arranging in Japan, practicing every day, and struggling with foreign notions such as "eyes that hear and ears that see." In a short, pithy narrative, he brings the heart of Zen to perfect clarity--intuition, imitation, practice, practice, practice, then, boom, wondrous spontaneity fusing self and art, mind, body, and spirit. Herrigel writes with an attention to subtle profundity and relates it with a simple artistry that itself carries the signature of Zen. --Brian Bruya

Wow, eh? It sounds absolutely tempting. It's available online at half.com, so if you're interested check it out. In essence, and in relation with our exercise Herrigel talks about relaxing the body to allow a foreign action to become engrained into the muscles (modern muscle memory). Relax the body... don't do 'nothing.' Just breathe. That helped in my juggling today where I was simply able to let go, as punny as you want to take that for...

(can't remember what this referred to in my notebook) > "You dropped the ball!" - One Minute.

We were assigned group projects today to be presented next Tuesday. He'll explain at the end of class. And so shall I at the end of the blog.

Matt and Laura
Nick, Taylor Bailey, and Christina Watkins
Jared and Samuel Hicks
Donald and Kelsey
Ellen and Taylor Shurte

After randomly assigning us to another person without much explanation, he took Nick and Kelsey down into the space and gave them sing-songy syllables to repeat and go back and forth with. Kelsey: Doo Watti, and Nick: Boo Wop. Oh the scatting Ella Fitzgerald would be spinning in her grave laughing at us. We were hysterical, simply hysterical. Then came Taylor Shurte and I with an addition part way through with Taylor Bailey. We went in a round of three. One of the syllables was Flik-flak. We did splendid, and we picked up on what Lank was saying pretty quickly. That made me feel kind of good. Taylor Shurte and I work well off of eachother and it's great having a female partner that I work well with. I've got lots of guys that I'm able to bounce off of easily, but to be honest, I've been kind of weird around girls when it came to acting. This year has been a progressive year for me in that respect...

I digress.

Donald and Laura (to which her syllable was Bibbity-bop-seeeex), Christina and Ellen, Sam (Squiddly o-day) and Matt. Taylor Bailey was once again an interrupter in thier duet of goodness. They kept laughing too hard for anything to really work, but the exercise was fulfilled.

I had a banana for my break and sat there for a few minutes before going to get a drink of water. It was an interesting break because I was rather anxious, ready to get the hell out of there and eventually out of town. I was going to go see a friend of mine in Cincinnati and I couldn't wait to get the class over with.

We reconviened and did some very interesting ball throwing exercises in our Theatre Circle. We would throw it to a random person on the other side of the circle and we'd have to be aware of anything coming towards us. Then he gave a few people balls who were to indicate exactly where they were throwing it. And then 3, and then 4, then 5 and so on. It was confusing at first, but we picked it up. We're smart like that. :) Lank said that if we all caught the last round of balls we'd all be in Junior Acting next year.... we caught them. Yay for us.

THEN we played Pick-up sticks. We split into two teams and had to construct a random and complex pattern on the ground for the other team to reconstructing using the poles they use for combat. It was impossible to get it right. Not impossible, but certainly for us with the resources we were working with and the amount of time. It was kind of a bum exercise to be honest. Wasn't really into it. Kind of just got irritated at everyone. There are some who take things a BIIIT too seriously.

Then Lank tried to get us to memorize a portion of a play by Shakespeare... I think it's from the Scottish Play... but I'm not entirely sure.

We ended our 2 hours of fury with simple questions for all of us. It was nice. It came down to us thinking too much (as is the usual ending of a Lank class-period)...

Our project: to select a person, people, situation, art, music, anything, and reverse it in the minds of people. Hmm... That wasn't ambiguous.